Rear of camera controls

On the back of the G5 you'll find the flip-out LCD with
a variety of buttons surrounding it. It's good to see that exposure compensation
and white balance (probably the two most modified settings) have been
taken out of the camera's menu and placed so that they can be changed
with a single button press.

Manual Focus
Press the MF button to enter manual focus mode, roll the control
dial to change focus position, click the dial to lock the focus.
During manual focus the center area of the frame is magnified to
help pick the focus point, at the same time a ruler is shown on
the right side of the frame with a distance readout.

Exposure Compensation
Displays the exposure compensation meter on the screen, use the command
dial to modify exposure compensation +/-2.0 EV in 0.3 EV steps. Press
the command dial to remove the meter.

Auto Exposure Lock (AE-Lock / FE-Lock)
Takes an exposure reading and locks it for the next shot. Only available
in P, Tv and Av exposure modes. If you have the flash enabled the
camera will fire the flash and take a meter reading against the
flash output (known as FE Lock), lock it and use it for the next
shot. Note that you can select equivalent exposures (exposure shift)
in P, Av and Tv after AE-Lock by rolling the command dial.

FUNC button
The FUNC button displays an overlaid menu which provides access to
several photographic settings. In Auto exposure mode you can only
modify the Image Size / Quality, in Scene exposure modes the available
settings vary. All settings are available in the creative record exposure
modes (P, Tv, Av, M or C). Settings appear in a column down the left
side of the display, use the arrow keys to move up and down each option
and the roll the command dial or press left / right arrow keys to
change. The meter button is used occasionally to change sub-options.
Click
here to view an animation of FUNC settings. Note that the icons
used below to represent each setting are the default for that setting
and that the icon will change once a setting change is made.

SET / AF Frame selectionIn record mode pressing this button allows you to move the AF
area around the frame to any one of 345 positions (a 23 x 15 grid).
Press and hold to reset the AF frame to the center area.

Enter / Leave the
Record MenuPressing this button in record or play mode enters that mode's
settings menu (described in detail on the next pages of this review).

Record review mode (during image review after taking
a shot)

Erase image
Erases the image, requires confirmation: Erase / Cancel.

Record voice annotation
Allows you to record a voice annotation which will have the same
filename as the recorded image, the review image is overlaid with
a record bar, this allows you to record a WAVE file of up to 60
seconds.

FUNC button
Pressing the FUNC button during record review provides you with the
option to change the current image to RAW format. This means that
you can shoot JPEG and if you realize you have a very important shot
you can press FUNC and save it as a RAW instead. Very useful, very
clever.

SET / Shutter release
button Freezes the image review until the shutter release is half-pressed.

Play Mode

Toggle Thumbnail
view
Toggles between display of full screen image or 3 x 3 thumbnails on
the LCD screen.

Jump
Enters a special mode which allows you to jump through playback images
by 10 frames forward or backward.

Record voice annotation
Allows you to record a voice annotation which will have the same filename
as the recorded image, the review image is overlaid with a record
bar, this allows you to record a WAVE file of up to 60 seconds.

Comments

Used this like 10 years ago. It looks kinda cool, the size is nice, the lens is nice. It's horribly noisy (optically) at "higher" iso. Back then it was good/ok low-light performance for a digital, but we've come a long way!

So, given this is a 12 going on 13 year old camera, and you could pick one up for 12 bux with extra working batteries, would it still be considered an interesting IF not excellent camera?. I have compact flash cards to go into just laying around from when I had a Canon XT and once had the G2 which took pretty good stills. (Has the feel of one of the classic Canon rangefinders). Anyway, even though 4x zoom isn't much, is it better than a cell phone camera?...Thanks